US Did Something to END Russia’s WAR… Even Ukraine Didn’t Expect This

Putin must have thought he’d seen it all from
Ukraine.But it’s only getting worse for Russia’s soldiers on the battlefield.

The US built
one of the most powerful weapons in the world, and Ukraine is now crushing Russia’s soldiers with
it.

Without any real fanfare, Ukraine has just casually added one of the world’s most fearsome
artillery guns to its arsenal, and it has made all of Russia’s weapons useless.

Ukraine itself never
expected this.

Russia had no idea it was coming.

But thanks to what the US created decades ago,
Ukraine now has a devastating weapon that it can use to end Russia’s war.

The weapon in question is
the 203-millimeter M110 self-propelled howitzer, which has been given to the 52nd Artillery
Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

That’s according to United24 Media, which says that the
brigade itself has confirmed the arrival of the weapon and noted that it is slotting in nicely
alongside domestically made Ukrainian artillery that is shattering Russia’s spring offensive.

“Our
equipment includes the 2S22 Bohdana self-propelled howitzer, RM-70 Vampire multiple launch rocket
systems, and the 203mm M110A,” the 52nd casually announced in a social media post on April 2,
almost making the M110 seem like an afterthought.

It isn’t.

And you’re going to find out why the
arrival of this powerful artillery gun in Ukraine is going to force a shift on the battlefield
very soon.

First, the question has to be asked: How did Ukraine manage to get its hands on
M110 howitzers at all? This is a Cold War-era weapon that the US military has officially
retired, so you would think that there should be no chance that Ukraine could get it.

However,
a retired weapon doesn’t necessarily equate to an obsolete one, and the origins of the M110s that
are now in Ukraine can be traced back to a deal made in October 2025.

That’s when Army Recognition
reported that Greece had approved the transfer of 60 of its US-made artillery systems to Ukraine,
along with 150,000 of the shells the system needs and some Zuni rockets in a deal believed to
be valued at €199.

4 million, or a little under $230 million.

The artillery and ammo were set to
make their way to Ukraine via the Czech Republic, and the systems would make their way to Ukraine
sans any modifications or refurbishment.

That may make it seem like Greece was getting the better
of the deal, but that isn’t the case at all.

For Ukraine, this deal meant that it was getting its
hands on a large number of artillery systems that have long been a specter on the battlefield
for any force that has come up against it.

The M110 howitzer may not be modern or
ultra-clever.

But what it can do is deliver massive amounts of firepower very quickly as
part of a war that, in many ways, feels like a time capsule of how battles were fought decades
ago, rather than the sort of conventional conflict you might expect to see in modern times.

More may
also be coming to Ukraine.

Army Recognition notes that the Greek armed forces have operated the
M110A2 since the early 1980s, and that it held approximately 145 units of the artillery system
before the announcement of the transfer of 60 of those units to Ukraine.

For decades, the system
has been Greece’s long-range artillery solution, though it has become surplus to requirements
as Greece modernizes to standard 155-millimeter NATO systems.

For Ukraine, that modernization
represented an opportunity to get its hands on powerful artillery that can shatter Russian
defenses and cripple troops as they attempt to launch attacks.

So, it was a good deal all
around.

And it looks even better for Ukraine when you see the breakdown of shells that have been
packaged along with the 60 howitzers.

United24 Media says that Ukraine has received 50,000
high-explosive M106 rounds as part of the deal, along with 40,000 rocket-assisted M650 rounds,
and 30,000 each of the M509A1 dual-purpose cluster munitions and M404 improved conventional munitions
that were made for the M110 later in its service life.

This means the howitzers that Ukraine has
received will be versatile, as well as powerful, and that’s only going to make them more useful to
Ukraine on the battlefield.

Before we get to how, another question has to be answered: Could Ukraine
get its hands on more M110 howitzers now that it has this initial batch? The answer seems to
be yes, if Army Recognition’s claims about Greece’s stockpiles are accurate.

There should
be another 85 M110s that Greece could transfer, though this assumes that the howitzers that Greece
has left are in a good enough state of repair for them to be useful to Ukraine.

We’ll have to wait
to see if any more deals can be struck that would allow Greece to profit from a system that it
sees as obsolete, but that Ukraine could use to cause serious damage to a Russian military that
is largely fighting the Ukraine war as though it’s stuck in the 1950s.

But the bigger question
lies in whether Ukraine would be able to get its hands on M110s from the United States.

After
all, this is an American weapon, and there is an initiative in place that allows NATO nations to
buy weapons from the US that are then delivered to Ukraine.

The Prioritized Ukraine Requirements
List, or PURL, could be the key to Ukraine getting its hands on more of these howitzers, assuming
they prove useful enough on the battlefield for Ukraine to want even more of them.

Ukraine’s NATO
allies have been making good use of PURL so far.

As of December 2025, they had funded more than
$4 billion in packages for Ukraine via PURL, which is a clever concept that sees Ukraine
denote what it needs in military aid so that it can be delivered directly to the front lines
by way of purchases from the US With PURL, Ukraine gets to dictate where the military aid it
receives goes, rather than hoping that its allies contribute weapons that it will find useful.

So, PURL could be the route taken to the US stockpiles of M110 howitzers.

But there may not be
any explosive presents at the end of that route.

According to Deagel, the US did produce 1,100
M110 howitzers after first introducing the weapon in 1963.

The same outlet also notes that the
system is somewhat active in various countries, such as Turkey, Spain, Bahrain, Morocco, and
Jordan, along with Greece.

A couple of those are countries that could feasibly provide some
of their howitzers to Ukraine, such as Spain, especially.

But as for the US, Deagel makes the
contradictory claim that the M110 is both active in the US military and that it was retired in
the 1990s, leaving only the M109 as America’s self-propelled howitzer option.

That turns the
question into what happened to those 1,100 M110s? We know the answer for at least some, as Real
Clear Defense notes that the 1990s saw the US use spent M110 barrels as the makeshift casings
of GBU-28 bunker-busting bombs that were used in the Gulf War against Iraq’s military.

But
that doesn’t tell us whether there are still M110s lying around in America’s stockpiles,
only without barrels, or if the US scrapped the artillery units themselves in the process
of extracting the barrels.

If it’s the former, perhaps Ukraine could get its hands on what’s left
of America’s M110s and then build barrels for the howitzers.

The Czech initiative through which
Greece sold its M110s to Ukraine might be able to help out with that, though this is admittedly
a speculative idea that relies on the US still having some M110s and, as crucially, being willing
to sell them to Ukraine via PURL.

Let’s move away from the ifs and maybes to look at something more
important: The arrival of the M110 howitzer in Ukraine could lead to key shifts happening in
the portions of the frontlines where the weapon is deployed.

That alone changes these weapons from
Cold War-era relics to game-changers.

But before we dive deeper into that, you’re watching The
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Now, what does the M110 bring to Ukraine? For a start, it delivers the sort of
firepower that Ukraine has been missing on the artillery front for much of the war with Russia.

This isn’t to say that Ukraine had no artillery firepower.

But the M110, it now has brings several
flavors of devastation for Russia’s forces.

Every shell fired by the M110 delivers 90 kilograms, or
about 198 pounds, of explosive force to a target.

And with the help of rocket-assisted munitions,
which we know Ukraine has received from Greece, that firepower can travel for up to 30 kilometers,
or about 18.

6 miles, to wherever Ukraine needs to explode.

This strength is combined with
mobility, as each M110 is loaded onto a tracked chassis with a 405-horsepower
engine, allowing Ukraine to move, strike, and move again so it can cover a wider portion
of the battlefield than it would be able to hit with immobile artillery.

There is a sacrifice
that Ukraine has to make for this firepower, though.

Army Recognition notes that each M110 has
to be crewed by a total of thirteen personnel, five of whom operate the M110’s vehicle, with
the rest following up in a cargo carrier that holds the shells used in an operation.

That’s a
pretty large troop commitment, and it explains why the M110s that Ukraine has are being rolled out
specifically to artillery brigades.

Those crews get their hands on a gun that elevates between
-2 and 65 degrees, the same outlet points out, and is traversable 30 degrees left and right.

The
M110 also has manual backup controls that can be used if its hydraulics fail, so Ukraine will have
to train its crews to use those.

Speed could also be an issue.

The M110 typically fires one round
every two minutes, though it can allegedly reach two rounds per minute during periods of intense
fire against an enemy.

That assumes the weapon can be reloaded quickly enough, as it only carries
two rounds.

So, the M110 isn’t a perfect weapon, by any means.

But it hits hard enough for
the sacrifices that Ukraine has to make to use it seem almost irrelevant.

The M110 is the
equivalent of the haymaker being delivered behind the rapid jabs that Ukraine fires at Russian
positions with its smaller and faster howitzers, and this combination of firepower is another key
factor in why the M110 will be a game-changer, as you’ll soon find out.

Before we get to
that, there’s also the price to consider.

Yes, the M110 is old equipment, at least compared to
a lot of what Ukraine receives from its Western allies.

But there’s a good reason why Ukraine paid
money for 60 of them, rather than insisting that Greece donate its old artillery units.

Just on
rounds alone, the $230 million that Ukraine spent works out to a little over $1,500 per powerful
round.

And that would assume that Ukraine got the 60 M110s themselves for free.

It didn’t.

They have to be included in the price, so $230 million has bought Ukraine a lot of firepower at
a very cheap price.

According to Defense Express, Greece priced each of the M110s that it sold to
Ukraine at €520,000, or about $599,000.

Multiply that by 60, and you get about $35.

9 million for
the howitzers.

That, in turn, brings Ukraine’s cost per shell down to under around $1,300.

All
Ukraine has to do is hit a few tanks and troop gatherings with its M110s, and the artillery has
practically paid for itself.

That sort of return on investment is huge for a country that is facing
major financial difficulties caused by four years of war with Russia.

Those difficulties will be
eased when Ukraine finally starts receiving the $105 billion loan that the European Union has
committed to providing.

The BBC says that the first portion of this loan could arrive in Ukraine
as early as April, though the government’s plan to spend $112 billion in 2026 still leaves it short
of around $45 billion.

Anything that Ukraine can do to keep its own costs low while inflicting
maximum financial damage on Russia is a positive move, and the cheap M110s that Ukraine just
received slide nicely into that strategy.

Then, there’s the versatility that the M110 offers.

And
that’s where things start to get serious for both Ukraine and Russia.

The 52nd Artillery Brigade
that has received the first batch of M110s is getting a weapon that perfectly complements the
others that it brings to its artillery assaults against Russia’s forces.

That brigade already
has the domestically produced Bohdana, which it can use to conduct precision strikes against
Russian positions at long range.

So, this type of artillery is ideal for hitting command-and-control
centers, ammunition depots, and other static targets in the near rear that Russia relies on
during its assaults against Ukraine’s defenses.

Also part of the brigade’s loadout is the RM-70
Vampire, which is used for large fire missions against equipment and troop concentrations, making
it the ideal choice for dealing with Russia’s mechanized assaults.

The M110 expands on this by
delivering huge amounts of firepower to Ukraine’s artillery brigades, as we mentioned earlier.

With this US-made howitzer, the 52nd Artillery Brigade can now hit hardened and high-value
targets that the RM-70 Vampire can’t take out.

That frees up the Bohdana to hit targets at a
deeper range than the M110 can manage, essentially creating a more layered approach to artillery
than Ukraine had before.

The Vampire takes out the assaulting units and equipment, the M110 destroys
hardened targets at the rear of those assaults, and the Bohdana ruins Russia’s rear so that future
assaults are weaker and even easier to pick apart.

Right now, Ukraine’s 52nd Artillery Brigade
is carrying out missions in Eastern Ukraine, where it is providing fire support and conducting
counter-battery operations, Militarnyi reports.

That brigade is also tackling Russia’s logistics,
which the M110s will be able to help with.

Defense Express offers a few more details, noting that the
brigade is currently operating in the Kharkiv and Kramatorsk sectors, where M110s are likely already
in combat.

The latter of those two settlements is very important.

Kramatorsk is one of the four
large cities that make up the Donetsk fortress belt, which stretches about 50 kilometers, or 31
miles, along the H-20 Kostyantynivka-Slovyansk Highway.

Located in the north of that belt, the
city needs to stand for as long as it possibly can so that Ukraine can use it to destroy Russian
forces as they attempt to follow through on Putin’s objective of snatching Donetsk, and, in
turn, the Donbas, away from Ukraine.

Kramatorsk was already a hellhole for invading Russian forces
after Ukraine spent over a decade reinforcing its defenses in the wake of Russia’s original campaign
of aggression in 2014.

Now that M110s are on the field, any gathering of troops or hardened
targets related to Russia’s push to take the city is going to be dealing with immense amounts
of firepower that they’re not ready to handle.

That covers how Ukraine is likely using its M110s
right now.

But it has 60 of these howitzers, and it seems unlikely that the 52nd Artillery Brigade
has all of them.

More are waiting in the wings, and the versatility that the M110 brings to the
table due to its shell variety opens up plenty of other opportunities for Ukraine.

Take Ukraine’s
kill zones as an example.

These kill zones, which stretch for miles and are infested with drones
and other defenses, are already tearing through Putin’s forces.

United24 Media does a good job of
explaining why, as it revealed what a typical kill zone contains in a visual explainer piece that is
horrifying to read if you’re a Russian soldier.

Each of these kill zones has both anti-tank and
anti-personnel measures designed to ruin anything that tries to make its way through them.

Beyond
the drones constantly patrolling the skies above, there are mines, anti-tank ditches, and dragon’s
teeth that are in place to stop Russian armor in its tracks.

Soldiers who try to penetrate on
foot have to deal with miles of barbed wire, the drones, and the networks of tunnels that
Ukraine has built to facilitate ambushes against infiltrating Russian soldiers.

What does any
of this have to do with M110s? Ukraine’s kill zones absolutely deliver on their name, as they
are filled with the meat and metal of Russian assaults all over the frontlines.

However, their
secondary purpose is to make specific pieces of territory inaccessible to Russia’s ground forces.

Rather than going through, those forces have to go around, and that’s where artillery comes
into play.

Through clever implementation of its kill zones, Ukraine can funnel Russian soldiers
into wide open spaces in the miles of territory between Russia’s positions and the defenses
that the country’s soldiers want to assault.

That funneling leads to ambushes.

Artillery
rains down shells while FPV drones fly around, ripping through armor and soldiers with abandon.

Now, imagine M110s firing shells weighing almost 200 pounds into these ambush points.

Nothing that
Russia sends on the ground would stand a chance.

And that’s what awaits in Russia’s future
as it launches its spring offensive against Ukraine.

The already lethal kill zones have
been made even more dangerous, as Ukraine has gotten its hands on aging equipment that can
be made new again precisely because Russia’s main tactic is just to send cannon fodder and,
occasionally, armor to batter Ukraine’s defenses.

Such antiquated tactics make an older weapon like
the M110 not just viable, but utterly destructive against a slow-moving Russian offensive that
has turned itself into the perfect prey for such a powerful predator.

A Cold War titan has
been revitalized in Ukraine.

If Russia wants to fight a war using ancient strategies, Ukraine now
has a weapon that it can use to counteract Putin’s tactics.

And the odds are high that Ukraine will
find interesting new ways to modernize its M110s, now that it has them.

The country specializes in
upgrading the Western equipment that it receives, and there is no better example than what Ukraine
has been doing with its Abrams M1 tanks.